Find the length of the longest row in a column in oracle

Question

Does anybody know if there is a way to find what the length of the longest row in a column in Oracle?

Basically I need to get the length of the longest row and then

Answer 1

To make the maxlength useable you may want to get it from a imbedded select

select <do something with maxlength here> 
from
(select x.*, 
( select max(length(yourcolumn)) from yourtable) as maxlength 
from yourtable x)

Answer 2

This should do what you want:

select max(length(MyColumn)) from MyTable;

Depending on what you are trying to achieve, you may also be insterested to know that you can output the data in the column plus exactly one space like this:

select rtrim(MyColumn)||' ' from MyTable;

Answer 3

To pad all values in a column to the longest value +1 you can do:

SELECT RPAD( column_name ,(SELECT MAX(LENGTH( column_name ))+1 FROM table)) FROM table;